My mouth tightened as Father Doyle—a man I’d met more times than my fiancé—began to start the service in earnest.
Undoubtedly, Aidan O’Donnelly Sr. thought he’d won some kind of boon by having the wedding ceremony in a Catholic church, and by being able to hold a traditional Catholic wedding when, really, it was a sign of my father washing his hands of me.
There’d be none of the traditions my sister would get at her wedding.
No special ceremonies like the crowns brides and grooms were given on the day, the earrings a bride received during the ceremony—Eoghan’s family had given me a set that matched my ring as part of a bridal trousseau. There’d be none of the games that were played between a couple who was in love for the entertainment of their family.
This was a business transaction, and Father had made that very clear by not having a thing to do with the ceremony.
Not even to save face among our people was he willing to lower his disregard of me, and though I didn’t want to be married at eighteen, I did want to be out from under his thumb.
There were only so many times an animal could be beaten before they decided to bite back, and each and every time he hit me, each and every time Svetlana slapped me and I was expected to do nothing other than take it, I was finding it harder and harder not to fight back.
Gritting my teeth was almost as painful as the bruises they inflicted upon me. Things had gotten worse recently, and it had culminated in the beating I’d ‘earned’ three days ago.
My entire face was numb. I was a little high on Tylenol with codeine from the pain—not just from the wounds themselves, but from the fact I’d had three makeup artists flittering around me, torturing me with beauty blenders on delicate skin.
I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t cried my makeup off, but it stuck. Somehow. And here I was.
Somehow.
Maybe I shivered, I didn’t know, but Eoghan’s hand tightened about mine, and it brought me back to the here and now.
A here and now where I was getting married.
To a man I didn’t know.
To a man I didn’t want to know.
To a man who had killed only God knew how many people for cold, hard cash.
I bit my lip at the thought and forced myself to think of anything other than the clusterfuck of this week, and how I’d endured my worst beating ever because I’d dared to tell my father that Eoghan was, essentially, a serial killer and that I didn’t want to marry him.
Instead, I concentrated on the vows.
There was no divorce in our world.
Only death.
Either through the freedom of illness or violence.
My mother had died that way, when our house had been infiltrated by theFamiglia, and she’d been raped first before she’d been slaughtered like a pig.
I’d always thought that would be my fate, had always thought…
Despite myself, I turned slightly into Eoghan, curving my body toward his warmth.
He was a stranger, the aforementioned serial killer, but the people I knew had beaten me like I was a dog, so I had no place to go for safety.
And while his words weren’t comforting, they sure as hell stuck with me.
“You’ll dance in their blood if you want to.”
My vision blurred as I contemplated that, then I thought about the fact I no longer had to answer to my father.
He wanted me to listen out for things, keep him in the loop, but I didn’t want my new, relatively safe haven to be tarnished by my being a spy, so there was no way in hell I was going to do that.
And if I avoided him like the plague, there was no way he could ever expect that of me.